Tag: milblogs

I was reading several sites today and coudln’t find just one to blog about so I am going to do compliation post, if you will. Good stuff and great reads….. Check them out.

First up is David Axe’s three-part series on the Afghan war and how one small village is in the middle of it. Really good stuff and today is only part one. I recommend it highly as it’s insightful, well-written and isn’t just some PR drool. Wired’s Danger Room has done a terrific job of covering the war as well as DOD issues.

Next up we have a story from the Marine Corps Times on how the Pentagon’s budget cuts are going to affect the Marine Corps. You know, the service branch that is already the smallest. Well, it might get a bit smaller than some had thought. A blurb from that story:

With orders to reduce its active-duty end strength by 20,000 over the next five years, the service stands to lose 4,700 more Marines than it had proposed following an extensive force structure review. Commandant Gen. Jim Amos’ plan called for an active-duty force of 186,800 Marines, down from about 202,100 today. Instead, by 2017 the service will have about 182,100 Marines.

And lastly, the Defense News has a story on cybersecurity and how the United States stands in at fourth among the countries check for whose computer networks are the safest. Who do they rank behind? Finland, Israel and Sweden. I need to look at some of the criteria and how they ranked.

Yon, a former soldier, has embedded dozens of times and has a certain level of celeb status in the milblog world. People either love him or hate him. He takes great pictures, understands the troops but is very candid at times and drives people bonkers with his statements. Here’s a sample from his story on the dust0ff mess:

This is not the only time that medevacs have been delayed in responding to 4-4 Cav requests, or had to switch landing zones due to heavy enemy fire. If thePedros were dispatched they would come right in because they can shoot back.

After ten years of war, the Army has had every opportunity to fix this problem. If the Army intended to right this wrong it would have been improved years ago. Clearly, the Army lacks the will to address this issue. We need courageous leadership. This issue should be elevated to the level of the Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who needs to shake the Army’s political tree and fix our medevac issue before more troops die.

The Army has nixed that idea saying there is not a need to arm the chopper which are not considered combatants under the Geneva Convention. (of course, the Taliban doesn’t care about that but I guess we do).

Another important point is that arming our MEDEVACs would significantly impact the capability of the aircraft. Machine guns, related mounting equipment, ammunition and the gunners all add weight to the aircraft. The added weight would hinder the aircraft’s ability to work at higher altitudes because of reduced lift, as well as its speed and range. Additionally, MEDEVACs can carry up to four litter patients, but if weapons were added, that number would be reduced, which would in turn require the commitment of more MEDEVAC aircraft, an already low density and high demand asset.

Further, arming MEDEVACs would not reduce the need for armed escort. Again, our aircraft travel in pairs. The decision to use escort is the tactical commander’s, and the Army does not dictate how or when it is necessary to use these assets.

Finally, it’s important to remember that the Army would change its policy if battlefield commanders wanted a change. We take our obligation to perform the MEDEVAC mission very seriously. We’re a learning organization and periodically we review our policies to make sure they remain relevant. We looked at the MEDEVAC policy in 2008, but after a review, we determined no change was necessary.

Friend of the blog, Carl Prine, a reporter with mlitary.com, a former Marine and soldier (he did combat duty in Iraq) has this to say about the matter over on his Facebook page. Good guy, intelligent. Friend him and learn. There is a chopper pilot who giving out great information over there. Really well done.

Either way you call it, Danger Room has an amazing graphic on their Blog… check it out. It brings down a number of things in an easy to use graph and a way to fact check all their data.

It’s way cool.

And the blog also has a cool post on “Jobs (in the military) that barely existed prior to 9/11. Among the things that made the list were: drone pilots, human terrain social scientists and donkey handlers. If that doesn’t intrigue you, I don’t know what will…

And the cost of an IED in dollars. Apparently, Danger Room found out that the average IED costs less than a 32G iPhone. That’s sobering.

Every photograph. Every SEAL helmet-cam shot. Every DNA test. Every name of everyone detained. Everything I lawfully can obtain under the auspices of the Freedom of Information Act from the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. military’s Central Command and Special Operations Command.

The agencies now have 20 business days to respond, but the proceedings likely will drag out for years, probably in federal court.

Good for Carl. I think he has done a good thing by the nation and the people. Hey, I get it, you don’t’ want to release gruesome pictures and then be accused of gloating over a man’s death, especially someone as polarizing as bin Laden. But at the same time, we are seeing that some don’t believe it. And sure, they aren’t going to believe it even if pictures are posted (see JFK’s assassination and the moon landing). But you need to release something. You need to do something to say that the guy we have been trying to kill for 10 years is gone and here’s the proof. Give me a cleaned up photo right before the burial at sea. Get the video of that service and burial to show the Islamic community worldwide that we respected his rights just after we blasted his head open.

Carl, a guy I met a few years ago at a Military Reporters and Editors conference, is intelligent and gets this far better than me. To him, it’s a matter of following the law. We are a free and open society and the law says what the law says, that all documents are open unless they aren’t. Sounds silly but you have to show why something can’t be released. The White House under Obama-rama has promised to be more transparent and campaigned on this. Despite that, Prine thinks his FOI will go down in a burning ring of fire.

I very much doubt I’ll ever see much from the trove of CIA and SEAL images and videos of the raid. Maybe four decades from now parts of their contents will be released by the National Archives, and historians and PhD candidates will revise some of the reporting whizzing at us today.

But I’m at least going to try to force the issue now, especially bin Laden’s death photos. There’s a 2003 Supreme Court case that mandates a test: Before denying their release, the government must weigh the privacy rights of the deceased’s bereaved family with the public’s interest in using and debating the images.

I want this White House to tell our democracy that the feelings of a terrorist’s family in Saudi Arabia weigh more than those of a people who send their sons and daughters to war.

It’s time to force this administration to live up to the promises it made about government transparency. I battled Bush on the same issues and won’t relent now.